Conclusions and Facts

T

he

fact

is that you feel anxiety when your mother calls you. The Real-Time Relationship concept demands that we are honest with each other by speaking the facts of our experience.

Not the mythologies, not the stories

, not the blame, not the conclusions – just the

facts

.

The fact is that you feel anxiety

– and you do not know

why

you feel this anxiety.

So what do you say to your mother

?

You tell her the truth.

Nothing more, nothing less.

You say:

“Mom, I feel a strange anxiety when you call – I don’t know why, I’m not saying it’s anything that you are doing, but I have felt it for quite some time – many years, actually as far back as I can remember. I’m not saying that this is your fault, because I don’t know where it comes from – I’m just telling you what I feel.”

And that’s all that you say, because that’s all that you know for sure.

Avoiding “Story Time”

You will be greatly tempted – and your mother

will doubtless tempt you with this as well – to blame your mother, so that you can both take a mutual dive off the cliff of “story time.”

The way that we do this is to inflict a

conclusion

on someone else.

Thus we are sorely tempted to say:

“Mom, I feel a strange anxiety when you call, because you are always so critical!”

Do you see the difference? Do you catch the difference between the first speech, and the second?

The first speech is an honest expression of your emotional state – feedback

in real-time

to the person that you are talking to about your immediate experience.

The second sentence is a

conclusion

– easily recognizable by the terrible use of the word “

because

.”

“

Because” is a word that indicates a shift from

experience

to

thesis

.

Our historical friend in

Lisbon, who watches the ship disappearing over the horizon, can honestly turn to someone and say: “Hey, I see that ship disappearing slowly over the horizon, hull first!” That is a true statement of his direct experience in the moment – no one can reasonably tell him that he is wrong.

The moment that he provides an explanation, however, he is open to criticism.

If he says: “The ship is disappearing slowly into the ocean

because

it is being swallowed up by Poseidon,” now he is in the realm of story time, since he has just made up an “explanation” for which he has no direct evidence.

Thus when you say to your mother

“I feel anxiety

because

you are so critical,” you are stating knowledge and certainty of a causal relationship for which you have no direct evidence.

It may be true that your mother

is hypercritical – it may be true that she has attacked you for years, every single time that she calls – your thesis may be entirely true,

but the problem is that you have absolutely no evidence

in the moment

.

This is how we so often shoot ourselves in the foot when we attempt to be honest

with others.

If you say to your mother

that your anxiety is caused by her critical nature, what is she going to say?

Come on, you know it exactly.

She is going to say, of course: “I am not critical.”

And what do you say in return?

You say: “You are

too

so critical! Like – every time we talk, you say that I sound

tired

…”

And so on.

And what happens with that conversation?

You argue and debate and provide evidence and deny and attack –

and never talk about your true feelings at all

.

Do you see how presenting

conclusions

is simply a massive avoidance mechanism which allows you to debate endlessly about inconsequential details that cannot be proved, rather than talk about your actual experience of your mother?

Stories can be debated endlessly – witness the endless idiocy of medieval scholasticism, or modern theological or political debates – because

stories are not real

.

You say that your mother

is critical, and she replies that she is not – that she just has your best interests at heart, that you can be careless or irresponsible, that she never

said

that, or that if she did you misinterpreted it, that you have always been so sensitive, that you must be tired now, that she has always tried to do her best, that motherhood is not easy, that she doesn’t understand why the younger generation behaves the way it does, that things weren’t like that when she was your age, that you’re not a parent, you’ll understand when you are a parent – and so on and so on and so on.

Round and round and round…

A massive, cumbersome, convoluted, baffling, frustrating, empty bag of Gordian knots that no sane human being could ever unravel.

How many times has this happened in your relationship

with your mother? How about your girlfriend? Boyfriend? Siblings? Friends?

When we experience a negative emotion, we are unbelievably and inevitably tempted to place the blame for that emotion on someone else, by creating an untestable mythology

that defines

their actions as causing our response

.

And it never, ever gets us anywhere at all.